Thursday, July 19, 2018

Using National Security to Rape the Earth and Poison the Population

Buried in a misleading article in today's Wall Street Journal is news that the US Commerce Department opened an investigation into imported uranium after receiving a petition from UR Energy Inc and Energy Fuels Inc, both of which want to mine in the US:

The Commerce Dept is investigating whether "uranium imports threaten national security" because of dependence against foreign suppliers.

The article reports that last year the US imported $2.2 billion in uranium ore and other products, mostly from Canada, followed by Austrlia, Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

The article doesn't mention that Energy Fuels Inc is mining near the Grand Canyon (see here), threatening the Colorado River with further contamination despite the millions of people that depend upon its water.

In 2017 UR Energy's Lost Creek mine in Wyoming had a terrible accident, described in the headline below as one of the worst recorded uranium mine spills, although trivialized in impact as not posing a threat:

The Lost Creek uranium mine north of Rawlins shut down operations Wednesday just weeks after reporting one of the largest spills of uranium injection fluid ever recorded in the U.S.

The spill was contained on site and is not a human health hazard, according to federal regulators. The spilled fluid had not yet been pumped into the uranium ore beneath the surface. Radioactive metal contained in the fluid was naturally occurring.

The mine, owned by Littleton, Colorado-based Ur-Energy, reported an Aug. 19 spill of 188,000 gallons of pre-injection fluid at Lost Creek. Another spill of 10,000 gallons of pre-injection fluid at Lost Creek on Tuesday was reported to federal regulators.

See how the article trivializes impact by stating that the radioactive metal contained in the spilled fluid was "naturally occurring."

Uranium mining rapes the earth and processing and utilization poison the population as well as the eco-systems upon which we depend.

We don't need nuclear power - its inefficient, costly, dangerous, and no solution exists for waste - and we don't need nuclear weapons.

We don't need any more uranium. Its antithetical to security when thought in relation to the preservation of life.

2 comments:

From Ship Rock NM, where a hundred or so, thousand-gallons of highly radioactive sludge, was illegally released illegally into into environment and, river.

Shiprock is also close to where underground nukes were detonated in New Mexico for project gasbuggyShiprock is on the navajo nation.

From there, moving West on the Najao Nation.

Moving west to the grand canyon and the Uranium Mines there! Also downwind from Nevada nuke testing in the 50s and 60s.

GO NORTH TO Halchita IN DEEP SOUTH UTAH, BY the sacred Monument Valley.

Halchita, is where there was a uranium Mill and where there were mines, on the navajo Nation. Halchita is also downwind, from where the american military nuke bombed its own citizens with a thousand bombs.

HALCHITA IS NAVAJO land, where half the residents in the area died from cancer.

Move norteast to Blanding, Utah, where energy Fuels is now located. By Bears ears, where Trump just opened unlimited uranium mining, even open pit uranium mining.

BLANDING IS Also downwinder. So many young people dead in mine accidents, prematurely from lung cancer, pacreatic cancer, ovarian cancer, lymphomas, leukemias. MANY PEOPLE THERE HATE URANIUM AND NUCLEAR.

A leader of the sagebrush rebellion, Cal Black, WAS a county commissioner of that county, San Juan County in the 60s and 70s.

Cal Black died with painful tumors, all over his body, at a young age. He regretted his involvement with Uranium, in the end.

The principal of Monticello High School, whose young son died of the same leukemia, that cursed so many kids in southern utah. All of those kids were downwinders and uranium babies. Monticello is just 20 miles north of the Energy Fuels genocide factory.

There was a Uranium Mill, right in the middle of monticello. It has not cleaned up all the way, to this day.

The mill and tailings of energy fuels in blanding blows radioactive shit all over s utah to colorado and arizona.

Blanding and energy fuels, are 20 miles s of Monticello Utah.

The heavily contaminated dust from that abomination, blows radioactive shit, to the Ute reservation in colorado 50 miles away, to Bluff Utah by Monument valley and has heavily contaminated the Bears Ears.

There were the numerous nuclear bombs, detonated at the headwaters of and under the Colorado River in the 60s and 70s. There are the towns north of energy fuels along the Colorado river in Utah and colarado, that had to sue the government and corporate polluters for 20 years, to get something done about the radioactive shit in their towns.

And now Trump is back to start it up all over again and make it worse.

About Me

I am a Professor at a large public university. I study political economy and biopolitics (the politics of life). My interests are diverse but are broadly concerned with economic, social and environmental justice. I have published 5 books: Crisis Communication, Liberal Democracy and Ecological Sustainability: The Threat of Financial and Energy Complexes in the Twenty-First Century (2016); Fukusima and the Privatization of Risk (2013); Constructing Autism (2005); Governmentality, Biopower and Everyday Life (2008/2011); Governing Childhood (2010).
I also participated in an edited collection on Fukushima: Fukushima: Dispossession or Denuclearization (2014).